“How about those of a Marine corporal, Sir?”
“What?”
“Once a Marine, always a Marine, Sir. I served in France.”
“Oh, now I know who you are. You’re Jack NMI Stecker’s friend, right? Pickleberry? Something like that. Frank Knox’s spy?”
“Pickering, Sir,” he corrected.
“Isn’t Admiral Fletcher going to wonder why you’re not on the McCawley?”
“Fuck Admiral Fletcher, General.”
Vandergrift flashed him an icy look.
“My hearing goes out from to time, Captain,” he said. “I didn’t hear that. But I rather liked the sound of it.” He raised his voice. “Sergeant Major!”
That luminary appeared at just about the same moment that Major Jack NMI Stecker came into the command post.
“Get Captain Pickering some sort of a weapon,” Vandergrift said. “And then take him down to Colonel Goettge.”
“Get him an ’03, Sergeant Major,” Major Stecker said.
The Sergeant Major, who had been told that a Navy captain was outside waiting to see General Vandergrift, looked at this senior Naval personage and then back at Major Stecker, whom he knew and admired, and asked, dubiously, “A rifle, Sir?”
“It’s all right, Sergeant Major. Captain Pickering is a Marine; he knows what a rifle is for,” Major Stecker said.
“You heard the Major, Sergeant Major,” General Vandergrift said. “Get him a Springfield.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
1 Patrick Jay Hurley, formerly Secretary of War and then Ambassador to New Zealand.
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